Jailbreak

Cydia

Do you call people on a daily basis with your iPhone? How long does it take you to get the Phone application open and finally call someone? Saurik lists up to seven different steps for getting a phone call started on an iPhone. In the end it feels cumbersome, and in Saurik’s words, “Frowny pants.” With one of Saurik’s own jailbreak tweaks, dubbed CyDialer, you can make this process much easier (three steps) by having contacts conveniently placed on your lock screen as illustrated in the screenshots above.

CyDialer is not a new jailbreak tweak, however it now has iOS 5 support and works even on iOS 5.1. Every iPhone owner that uses the iPhone to call people should have this tweak.

The way CyDialer works is that you set favorite contacts from your Contacts application and those contacts that are favorited will appear on your lock screen in a Cover Flow format. Because of this, it’s very easy to navigate through your contacts and pick the one you want to call. Once you find the contact you want (their name and phone number is displayed), simply tap on the picture and the interface from the screenshot on the right, up above, will appear with the green slider and the ability to slide to call or cancel.

From the preferences pane for CyDialer, you can choose whether or not to show the name and number of each contact. Obviously, for security reasons, you can choose to toggle one or the other to keep people from knowing who you’re calling or from being snoopy and recording your friend’s numbers. You also find the ability to hide notifications or bypass the pass code. Saurik notes that some people enjoy the speedy process of bypassing the pass code to make phone calls, however it won’t be secure as it gives anyone that picks up your iPhone access to your phone.

If you think you might find an easier to way to call people with an iPhone useful, be sure to check out CyDialer. Now that it’s iOS 5-compatible, many people can go back to enjoying this great tweak as countless devices are now running the new iOS 5 operating system. The tweak really does increase the efficiency of making phone calls and it even looks good!

Sure took him long enough to update it for iOS 5. Now it's either this or ISX... I use my email/twitter a lot more than my phone so I'll probably stick to ISX.

FWIW, I released the iOS 5.x version of Cydget, and a corresponding bugfix for CyDialer, a few weeks ago, but didn't really tell anyone (and so we only see this article today). That said, it definitely takes a while to make Cydget's WebCycript feature work on new versions of the firmware, and for almost all users of Cydget (except me with CyDialer, and maybe one other tweak) that's the only feature they care about :(.

So, sometimes, if you check apt.saurik.com/debs, you'll find some magic "newer than the latest" packages that have crazy other issues (such as totally failing WebCycript, or being less stable somehow) but support things like iOS 5.x (in this case, the version of Cydget that was finally released April 16th was actually technically available in late February and was fixed for all firmware versions early March).

Now it's either this or ISX... I use my email/twitter a lot more than my phone so I'll probably stick to ISX.

You can use them both if you like. In Settings -> Cydget -> Lock Cydget Order, make sure that Away View (the normal lockscreen) and Cydialer are both active, and then drag Away View above Cydialer. This way, your default view is your normal lockscreen with IntelliScreenX, and you can tap the home button (and drag-to-hide IntelliScreenX) to display and use Cydialer. Tap the home button again to go back to the Away View.

i tried it not as fast as it should. if the phone app is closed it's still opening the phone app which takes a long time, also needs more customization, like get rid of the black background or allow custom background, list view of contacts instead of coverflow, etc.

i tried it not as fast as it should. if the phone app is closed it's still opening the phone app which takes a long time, also needs more customization, like get rid of the black background or allow custom background, list view of contacts instead of coverflow, etc.

While this tweak looks cool, I have grown very fond of Callbar, which can also function from the lock screen and I've found it to be a quick and convenient interface to all the Phone.app functions (save for the Voice Mail and Favorites tabs) without actually opening Phone.app.

After reading this Article I purchased the tweak. I am very pleased with this tweak and it's stability. Because of this tweak and it's functionality I am no longer bothered when using a password. Great job!!!